Rudy Giuliani swears he hasn't been side-lined after epic flubs on cable news

It's been since January 2019 that President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani last appeared on television.

Axios cited sources familiar with Giuliani's thinking, saying he sees his job as trying to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller and his probe to the public. It seems like it hasn't worked out the way he anticipated. An astounding 420 members of Congress voted last week to demand Mueller's report is released to the public. The non-binding resolution is likely to be ignored by the White House.

The last time Giuliani appeared on the news shows, he seemed to be taking a "victory lap," Axios described. It was in the wake of Mueller's office stepping in to publicly discount a BuzzFeed story that accused Trump of committing a felony. Giuliani ended up causing more problems by admitting Trump was dealing with the Trump Tower Moscow project up until Nov. 2016. He was then forced to walk it back.

Since then, he's disappeared. Giuliani did an online interview about Paul Manafort's short sentence being fair, but he's stayed out of the TV lights, and Axios said it might have something to do with their frustration with Giuliani.

"Both Trump and the White House lawyer handling the Russia investigation, Emmet Flood, have privately griped about some of Giuliani's TV appearances," the site reported. "A third source said Trump thought it would be best if Giuliani stayed off TV for a while after his Jan. 20 hits."

Giuliani said that he spent "hours" with Trump in the past 30 days, hasn't heard any complaints, and his flub had nothing to do with his TV absence.

"About a month to a month and a half ago we decided, because we thought the Mueller report was imminent in the next four or five days, that it would be better not to comment until the report was filed or made public," Giuliani told Axios. "Obviously those days have now expanded way beyond four or five days."

He claimed he wanted to prevent "friction" between Trump's team and Mueller, an odd decision given the team is known for competitiveness.

Giuliani also admitted there had been some favorable decisions out of Mueller and the courts, while others were not.

"So we see that there's the capacity to go either way," he said.

Read the full report at Axios.